Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,808 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
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Beauty
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“If you capture a ship, Sharpe, you keep the old name unless it's really obnoxious. Nelson took the Franklin at the Nile, an eighty gun thing of great beauty, but the navy will be damned if it has a ship named after a traitorous bloody Yankee so we call her the Canopus now.”
Bernard Cornwell (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beauty, brains, and a complete psycho. My dream girl.”
Rene Balcer (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. [It is] a major force in explaining man to man.”
Edward Steichen (1879–1973) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Time, "To Catch the Instant", 7 April 1961
“Be yourself by growing above yourself. Don’t stand in your own way. Let us change with, and not against, movement. Then we shall be static and shall not decompose. Then there will be neither good nor evil, neither beauty nor unsightliness, neither truth nor falsehood. Conceptions are fixations. If we stand still, we block our own path, and we are confronted with our own controversies.”
Jean Tinguely (1925–1991) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: reprinted in 'Zero', ed. Otto Piene and Heinz Mack, Cambridge, Mass; MIT Press 1973, p. 119
“Abstractness, sometimes hurled as a reproach at mathematics, is its chief glory and its surest title to practical usefulness. It is also the source of such beauty as may spring from mathematics.”
Eric Temple Bell (1883–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My greatest beauty secret is being happy with myself. I don't use special creams or treatments – I'll use a little bit of everything. It's a mistake to think you are what you put on yourself. I believe that a lot of how you look is to do with how you feel about yourself and your life.”
Tina Turner (1939–2023) first seen 2009 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tammy Jacks, "Tina Turner's Top Beauty Secrets", Woman & Home (22 July 2016) [originally appeared in the March 2009 issue as an interview by Louise Gannon]
“The only thing to contemplate there is this raw force. It's as much terror as beauty. You don't feel welcomed by the natural world – I completely felt like an interloper.”
Lorde (born 1996) first seen 2019 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On fulfilling her "lifelong dream" to visit Antarctica in February 2019.
“Placed under the sway of conflicting urges of the Indian masses we are yet given the poetic quality of composing a harmonious life. There are thousand stands of culture that make of the cultural life of our people a variegated pattern of exquisite beauty and richness.”
Zakir Hussain (politician) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I believe that children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the beauty they possess inside.”
Whitney Houston (1963–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The meaning of life is beauty and love.”
Rudy Rucker (born 1946) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Each human being has the eternal duty of transforming what is hard and brutal into a subtle and tender offering, what is crude into refinement, what is ugly into beauty, ignorance into knowledge, confrontation into collaboration, thereby rediscovering the child’s dream of a creative reality incessantly renewed by death, the servant of life, and by life the servant of love.”
Yehudi Menuhin (1916–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Christ is a persuasion, a form of evoking desire... Such an account [of Christ] must inevitably make an appeal to beauty.”
David Bentley Hart (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beauty crosses every boundary, traverses every series, and so manifests the God who transcends every division.”
David Bentley Hart (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In a time when so many artists have learned to confabulate with extremes of horror and alienation, the most daring thing an artist can do is to fill a book, a gallery, or a theater with joy, hope, and beauty.”
Theodore Roszak (scholar) first seen 1997 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: with Betty Roszak, "Deep Form in Art and Nature" Alexandria 4, Vol.4 The Order of Beauty and Nature (1997) ed. David Fideler
“The bond of sympathy, like the artist's eye for beauty, may stretch across many divisions.”
Theodore Roszak (scholar) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The passion and beauty and joy of science is that we humans have invented a process to understand the universe in a way that is true for everyone. We are finding universal truths.”
“Nature is constructed in such a way that there is no doubt that it cannot be so constructed by casuality. The more one studies the phenomena of nature, the more deeply one becomes convinced of this. There are natural laws of an incredible depth and beauty. One cannot think that all of this can be reduced to an accumulation of molecules.”
Carlo Rubbia (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I must admit that I am not a member of the ugly school. I have a great regard for certain notions of beauty even though to some it is an old fashioned idea. Some photographers think that by taking pictures of human misery, they are addressing a serious problem. I do not think that misery is more profound than happiness.”
Saul Leiter (1923–2013) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Saul Leiter (2008) by Agnès Sire
“But it is not an exaggeration to say that mystical experience is everywhere unitary in the same sense that everywhere aesthetic experience is unitary. British, American, German, Indian, Chinese, Japanese art are of course very different from one another. Yet they have one root in their basic experience of beauty.”
Walter Terence Stace (1886–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As every bird-watcher knows, the beauty of a bird’s song is inversely correlated with the colorfulness of its plumage.”
Matt Ridley (born 1958) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beauty is not arbitrary.”
Matt Ridley (born 1958) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“O dawn, you washed them away in a woman who was clean. O form of woman, sister of Wisdom, how great is your glory! For in you there rose a life unquenchable that death shall never stifle. Wisdom exalted you to make all creatures fairer in your beauty than they were when the world was born.”
Hildegard of Bingen (1098–1179) said by 1179 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Just as Rukmini's mind is fixed on Me, My mind is fixed on her. I can't even sleep at night. I know that Rukmi, out of envy, has forbidden our marriage. She has dedicated herself exclusively to me and her beauty is flawless. I will bring her here after thrashing those worthless kings in battle, just as one brings a blazing flame out of firewood.”
“Rukmini, and no one else, deserves to become His wife, and He also, possessing such flawless beauty, is the only suitable husband for Princess Bhaishmi.”
“Rukmini was a great beauty, and the daughter of the king of Vidarbha. She was also very clever. When she was of a marriageable age, her father king Bheeshmaka, summoned his ministers and asked them to suggest suitable alliances. They recommended Vasudeva’s son Krishna as suitable groom.”
“I always thought there were going to be things in my life that would go away, like beauty, youth, all of that stuff...But I never thought that my voice would leave me, because it’s so inherent to my nature. It was my identity. So when I couldn’t sing, that was unbearable. There were times I couldn’t even get out of bed – I was so depressed.”
Shakira (born 1977) first seen 2019 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On almost losing her voice following a vocal hemorrhage in “Shakira: 'I needed surgery – or divine intervention'” in The Guardian (2019 Nov 11)
“Looking at beauty in the world is the first step of purifying the mind.”
“God wanted to make heaven and the earth is that heaven. Nowhere in the universe there is so much love, life, beauty and peace. Enjoy your stay with the fellow beings.”
“Life is not always perfect. Like a road, it has many bends, ups and down, but that’s its beauty.”
“Go to the center of your inner being. Radiate peace in every direction. A compassionate heart radiates rays of beauty that removes the clouds of million hearts.”
“The most economical way of obtaining good results is to apply the great, fundamental principles of art; and depend on them for beauty, rather than upon the use of either applied ornament or more expensive materials... much better results are likely to accrue from truth than falsehood, and from architectural [rather] than archaeological methods.”
Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beauty is largely dependent on fitness, and fitting methods are usually the most convenient and economical; therein, indeed, to a great extent, lies their very fitness.”
Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The best art, and the only art which will ever lead to great results, must have for its basis the interpretation of beauty in nature.”
Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why can there not be a new art founded on the only principle which can produce great art—the principle that art is the interpretation or extraction of the essence of beauty in nature, and all else is secondary?”
Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the chief rules of good design were understood by the masses as they might be, nothing would do more to promote beauty, improve workmanship, add to the value of manufactures, and in many other ways further the general welfare and prosperity of the country. They are simple, easy to acquire, and should be taught with the alphabet.”
Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reason...to suppose any production, worthy to be called a work of art, can be made without its use is foolish. ...By the use of reason many mistakes in design may be avoided and many counterfeits of art readily detected....Beauty alone is an excellent reason for many things, but when a design is in direct conflict with common sense it cannot be a work of art.”
Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) said by 1947 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To find our steady state and solve the sustainability puzzle, we need to abandon the relentless quest for dominance. We need to abandon our visions of progress as growth... Only progress in diversity, equality, and beauty can stand the test of time. We need to live within our limits.”
Steve Hallett (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Community organizers are motivated to promote the dignity of the nation, the beauty of people and planet. They don't tolerate injustice. History depends more on such common folks than on presidents and generals. Democracy works because of their generosity.”
Paul Glover (born 1947) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (“How to Take Power,” book) 2011
“The function of the modern artist was not to convey beauty, but to convey new truths.”
Eric Kandel (born 1929) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“True beauty is always oddly surprising.”
Tanith Lee (1947–2015) said by 2015 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Your beauty leaves me breathless,” said Pereban. “Yet you find the breath to say so.”
Tanith Lee (1947–2015) said by 2015 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When the intellect has received an awareness of the beauty of its nature,”
Isaac of Nineveh (640–700) said by 700 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Humans are an embarrassing species w/ small glimmers of beauty that seep through the veil of bigotry&stupidity, every once in a small while.”
Frances Bean Cobain (born 1992) first seen 2014 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: June 17, 2014
“Whether be written with any trend, poetry is always carrying the beauty of primordial, to the resurrection, recreate the world, forever opposed to the bad and evil.”
Mai Văn Phấn (born 1955) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When works of art are presented like rare butterflies on the walls, they're decontextualized. We admire their beauty, and I have nothing against that, per se. But there is more to art than that...”
Hans Haacke (born 1936) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When you see 300 people naked in Grand Central Station, or a river of flesh flowing through the beauty aisles of Selfridges department store, it makes you think about all sorts of social and political issues.”
Spencer Tunick (born 1967) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a matter of harmonizing these movements, thus arriving at a new possibility for beauty.”
Alexander Calder (1898–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In its purest distillation beauty had always been merciless.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No state can match the beauty of the Chesapeake Bay, our beaches and farms, or the mountains of Western Maryland, the Port of Baltimore, or the historic charm of every corner of our state.”
Larry Hogan (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Museums matter because they are invaluable points of collection and contemplation for a species with a complicated past and self-awareness issues. Somewhere in their wonderful mix of beauty, fact, fiction, lies, and error we discover crucial truths about us.”
Guy P. Harrison (born 1963) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source